In Looking for the Truth, I did a point by point critical analysis of Organic Agriculture Beats Biotech at its Own Game by Timothy LaSalle, CEO of the Rodale Institute. I gave Dr. LaSalle credit for being a smart person who allows his ideology to cloud his judgement.

After reading Why GMO Foods Have Failed at Producing Healthy Food for More People, I don’t think I should have given him that much credit. I already covered most of his points in my previous post, but he makes some new points in this article that are, frankly, reminiscent of the scaremongering lies promoted by the Republican party about imaginary death panels.

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Someone sent me a link to some YouTube videos of Jeffrey Smith promoting one of his books. I’m not sure what this person expected to accomplish, but it gives me a great opportunity to discuss the important issues of credibility and bias. I just started reading Lies, Damned Lies, and Science, about these and other issues surrounding science communication, so these sorts of things have been very much on my mind. I’ll be posting more on the book once I finish it. Be careful if you pick it up, there are a few errors about biotechnology in the beginning, but otherwise it’s great so far.

I’m frustrated by Smith’s star status among anti-GMO activists for quite a few reasons, but the main one is: who the heck is he?

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The National Corn Growers Association is an important trade group. Their mission is to advocate and lobby on behalf of corn growers, or as they say “to create and increase opportunities for corn growers”. At the Maize Genetics Conference, I got to listen to their Chair of the Research and Business Development Action Team, Pam Johnson (you can find my summary of her remarks in my post Research and the Recession). She was a little overenthusiastic, but generally made sense, advocating for better cooperation between government and industry to produce more useful research. I hate to say it, but, was all that just for show?

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When I first read reports of mercury in corn syrup, I was first shocked, then concerned, then skeptical. Janet (qualifications unknown) at Ethicurean described the source of the mercury (in fact, she was picked up by Huffington Post):

How did the heavy metal get in there? In making HFCS — that “natural” sweetener, as the Corn Refiners Associaton [sic] likes to call it — caustic soda is one ingredient used to separate corn starch from the corn kernel. Apparently most caustic soda for years has been produced in industrial chlorine (chlor-alkali) plants, where it can be contaminated with mercury that it passes on to the HFCS, and then to consumers.

First of all, I’m no particular fan of corn syrup; it tastes nasty and I avoid it. However, I also avoid added sugar or rice syrup or any other sweetener because I eat enough calories without them. Various types of foodie have been railing against HFCS for a long time, but I haven’t actually be able to figure out why. Instead of saying “HFCS is bad” we should be saying “processed food is bad”. Any special link between obesity and HFCS was broken in December with a comprehensive review in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (see press release in Newswise). The other argument against HFCS is that we are growing too much corn, but this is a sidestep at best. If people really cared about the amount of acres taken up by corn, they’d be saying “eat less meat” instead of “eat less corn syrup” (see the ISU Extension fact sheet about corn syrup for the uses of corn – ironically, you can’t get both ethanol and HFSC from a given bushel). Seriously, if you don’t like the stuff, then don’t eat it – but it’s helping no one to spread falsehoods and exaggerations.

Ok, back to mercury. While I’ll be the last person to say that the FDA is doing the best job in keeping us all safe, or that food processing conglomerates aren’t out to get a profit no matter what, American capitalism does have some protective effects. I’d wager that the Corn Refiners Association knew about the possible contamination source long ago and has done their best to remove or reduce it (which is exactly right, according to the CRA press release) simply to avoid future boycotts and lawsuits. Some commenters on Janet’s post were also skeptical, along with Marion Nestle on her Food Politics blog.

Marion points out that the study used no controls, and I heartily agree. The researchers should have obtained multiple brands of approximately equivalent foods (vanilla flavored yogurt for example), tested for mercury, and looked for any statistically significant differences between those that contain and those that do not contain HFCS. Without this comparison, the result that “nearly one in three” of the products contained detectable amounts of mercury is meaningless. Some amount of mercury is in everything we eat, processed or not, perhaps the result of decades of coal burning. Of course, there’s many more details to consider…

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